Fladungen is a town in the Rhön-Grabfeld district, in Bavaria, Germany. It is situated in the Rhön Mountains, 11 km northwest of Ostheim, 20 km west of Meiningen, and 33 km east of Fulda. It is the northernmost town in Bavaria, bordering Hesse to the northwest and Thuringia to the northeast. Fladungen lies at the southern edge of the Rhön Mountains, and the Rhön Biosphere Reserve begins a few kilometers outside of town. It is at the head of the river Streu, which flows southeast through it to join the Franconian Saale near Bad Neustadt. The region around the town is popular for hiking and cycling, especially in the summer and early autumn. The town is a service center for the surrounding agricultural region. There are also some small industries, including a cement factory and a biogas plant. The 2009 population was estimated at just over 2,100. History Fladungen first appears in a public record in 789 AD; the town was granted "Stadtrechte" (city rights) by Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1335. It became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria after the Treaty of Paris in 1814. From the 18th to the mid-20th century, Fladungen was the primary market town for the Franconian Rhön, a relatively rural and underpopulated region whose economy was dominated by agriculture, sheep-herding and timber. During the Cold War, the border with East Germany ran through the hills around Fladungen, and the town was cut off from much of its traditional hinterland. (A portion of the old border fence has been preserved as a memorial in the Rhön-Biosphere park, a few kilometers north of the town.) Nevertheless, the town grew rapidly after the Second World War, nearly doubling its population between 1945 and 1990. City Council (Stadtrat) The municipal elections in Bavaria 2014 led to the following composition of the city council: CSU: 24.8%=4 seats Free voters: 30.4%=4 seats Voters block districts (Wählerblock Ortsteile): 30.1%=4 seats Leubach area (Leubach list): 14.7%=2 seats Mayors 1968-1996: Raimund Goldbach 1996-2002: Herbert Ditzel Mischa Schmitt Robert Müller 2014-2020: Agathe Heuser-Panten since March 2020: Michael Schnupp Main Sights Fladungen is noted for the "Freilandmuseum", an open-air museum of historical houses that includes more than a dozen farmhouses as well as a church and a mill. The town hall is unusually large; it was built by Michael Kaut, architect of the Marienberg Fortress in Würzburg, in 1628. The town hall was